MGG: The rise and rise of the Indonesian Illegal Worker By M.G.G. Pillai16/11/2001 3:34 pm Fri

The Indonesian manpower and transmigration minister, Mr Jakob
Nuwa, says Malaysian business men want cheap labour. Which is
why Indonesians flock to Malaysia, and ready employment at less
than fair rates. The law does not allow it, but this is
cheerfully ignored. When the police decide to crack down, the
business men shop these workers, and wash their hands off them.
They are often not paid as they should, and the police are
informed when they ask what they were promised. He tells only
half the tale. But the risk is worth it. It is an unmentioned
rule that if Malays cannot be found for menial work, muslim
Malaysians and foreigners fill the jobs ahead of the non-Muslim
Malaysian. This applies to every undertaking which depends on
casual labour. And this daily quote is by Malays and
Indonesians, and all but a handful of others.

The government would not admit it, but these illegals, from
Indonesia and elsewhere are brought by syndicates with links to
the National Front. Each one has a sorry tale to tell, of how
the family chattel was mortgaged for one to make their lot a
little better, only to end in losing every thing, in debt and
without means in a foreign country illegally. The Indonesians
fare better: the luckier get their stay regularised, with
permanent residence or citizenship. I came across them when my
wife applied for her citizenship, and one sticks in my mind:
he was grumbling at how his friend became a citizen after
three years of stay and he "only" had permanent residence
after five years. My wife had to wait as long after she applied
before she got it. The two Indonesians had special privileges
denied the others, especially non-Muslim.

There is money, lots of it, to be made in this modern slave
trade. The son of a former cabinet minister is a
multimillionaire in his twenties by controlling the import of
workers through the employment agencies his father threw his way.
He drives around in cars that each cost more than a Malaysian
earned in a life of back-breaking toil. The workers came from
Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Myanmar, Bangladesh, India
and Pakistan. The list changed with the official mood, and the
scams involved were many. One ambassador tried with any
seriousness to curtail this trade in his countrymen, but he left
before he could: the powers ranged against him, in Malaysia and
in Bangladesh, were too strong for him to overcome. The rules
are changed so often that corruption is endemic. Only the
government insists it is corruption-free, but it is the name of
the game in every sphere in which the government is involved.
But with each change in the regulations opens yet another avenue
for corruption.

When the late Prime Minister, Tun Abdul Razak Hussein, met
the then Indonesian President Suharto in Palembang in 1975, it
was agreed that 500,000 Indonesians would come to Malaysia to
work in the estates and factories with a shortage of workers.
The paperwork took longer than usual, only to be expected in two
huge uncontrollable bureaucracies. In the interim, waves of
Indonesians landed in the shores, so that when the legal ones
arrived, it doubled the recent arrivals. This did not include
the constant arrival of Indonesians illegally in Sabah and
Sarawak.

These Indonesian immigrants, illegals and others, quickly
set up roots, and quickly merge with the local Malays. They work
hard and long hours, and soon became a feature in Malaysian
labour. They married locally, acquired land and chattel,
including Malay reservation lands, and cannot be displaced
easily. The government is ambivalent, and when it talks of
illegals, they do not look upon the Indonesians as one. There is
a plan to send back a few thousand illegals every month, but this
is more than offset by the larger number that lands on our
shores. There is fear in government at what this would lead to,
but it also believes it would disappear if it ignores it. But
when it becomes a problem, they is a sudden outburst of anger and
activity, and those caught in the sweep are sent back. Then it
is back to the old ways. It is corruption the government would
not crack down that fuels this modern slave traffic. Indonesia
is a neighbour and the two countries often look askance at the
other and is miffed and angered when the other makes a move. At
no time, however, does the government address it. It is beyond
that.